“Now, as the stock market has practically gone parabolic, investors have taken on massive amount of margin debt,” he said. “When this margin debt is unwound, like it was during the last two bear markets, it’s going to be nastier than before because there is so much speculation in the system... The pain is coming and unavoidable.”

Who knows. Would anyone be surprised? The real question of course is what does it all mean for the price of a three bed semi in Conskeagh?

_________________"It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan.” ― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

Doesn't that chart just show that debt secured on equities is proportional to total market cap?

As an economic illiterate, I was afraid to say that. Yeah, looks like investors borrow against their equity when markets are going up, and then have to sell stuff to pay for margin calls when they go down. Isn't that normal?

_________________"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future" – Niels Bohr

Facebook's $100 billion-plus rout is the biggest loss in stock market historyFacebook on Thursday posted the largest one-day loss in market value by any company in U.S. stock market history after releasing a disastrous quarterly report.The social media giant's market capitalization plummeted by $119 billion to $510 billion as its stock price plummeted by 19 percent. At Wednesday's close, Facebook's market cap had totaled nearly $630 billion, according to FactSet.

No company in the history of the U.S. stock market has ever lost $100 billion in market value in just one day, but two came close.

On Sept. 22, 2000, Intel shed $90.74 billion in market value as the dot-com bubble burst. Earlier that year, Microsoft lost $80 billion from its market cap in one day.Other companies that have experienced similar one-day losses in dollar amount include Apple in 2013, when it lost $59.6 billion, and Exxon Mobil in 2008, when it lost $52.5 billion.Facebook's enormous loss in value came a day after the company reported weaker-than-expected revenue for the second quarter as well as disappointing global daily active users, a key metric for Facebook. The company also said it expects its revenue growth rate to slow in the second half of this year.

Several analysts downgraded Facebook's stock, including Nomura Instinet's Mark Kelley. "With stagnating core user growth, we think there is too much near- to mid-term uncertainty to recommend shares at this point," Kelley, who downgraded the stock to neutral from buy, said in a note.The percentage decline was also the worst in Facebook's history.

Investors spooked by limits to growth in a finite world, who've thunked that.Did they seriously think that it would continue to grow indefinitely?

_________________"Democracy is like sausage, you want it, but you don't want to know how it is made". [John Godfrey Saxe]Ronald Coase, Nobel Economic Sciences, said in 1991 “If we torture the data long enough, it will confess.”"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild"To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated": Elon Musk